You will have read plenty of hit pieces in the last few days. People are understandably angry and every word written will have been deserved. This is not one of those pieces though. Relegation has been a very long time coming. It’s probably the closest thing Cardiff have had to a plan in the last few years. I’ve already mourned and moved on.
I’m instead trying to accentuate the positives because there are plenty and it’s easy to forget that in times like these. If Cardiff are to regroup and come again, there is no time for them to lick their wounds and feel sorry for themselves. They don’t have a manager or a great deal of time to strategize and prepare for League One, water unchartered for more than two decades.
To start with some recent good news, Cardiff were awarded the ironically named Fan Engagement accolade at the EFL award this week. This is not for the infrequent messages from the largely absent powers that be at the club, but for the sterling work those at the club have done with the 125th anniversary campaign. Events organised have included a £125,000 community foundation pledge, 125 player visits, plus events at the Cardiff Castle and Cardiff City Stadium.
Embed from Getty ImagesThey have the 16th biggest stadium club stadium, a new training ground on the way and a brand-new youth training complex in Llanrumney. The academy has produced Rubin Colwill, Isaak Davies, Joel Bagan and newly crowned Young Player of the Year Cian Ashford for the first team in recent years, plus the likes of Gabriele Biancheri, Charlie Crew and Lewys Benjamin, who were snapped up by bigger clubs. Their sales help make the structure self-sufficient and help raise the profile of the club.
The squad may be flawed, but it’s neither quite as good as seem to think, nor as bad as some insist. Obviously the proof is in the pudding and they may well finish bottom of the league, but for a club as deeply dysfunctional as Cardiff is and despite often operating under some sort of transfer restriction, they usually somehow maximise their means and enjoy largely prosperous transfer windows.
Ultimately though, we can go back and forth on Cardiff’s strengths and weaknesses, where they need to improve and what the future needs to look like, but one essential truth and fundamental flaw remains.
Cardiff will never thrive under a dictatorship and that is the one thing that will never change.
Embed from Getty ImagesKen Choo is a part-time CEO and a part-time car salesman. In almost any other business, his failings in recent years would cost him his job, but Vincent Tan trusts him, so his job is secure. He is the sole decision maker at the club, so what he says goes and his power is unchecked. As Mehmet Dalman, a once executive chairman that is now a rarely seen non-executive, has explained, he was once there to advise, but he is now there merely to execute orders.
Having a solitary decision maker in any business is far from ideal, but when they have no knowledge or respect for their industry, disaster awaits. That’s how you end up rebranding a football team without thinking through or caring about the consequences. That’s how you create an environment where it doesn’t matter how many experts you bring into the organisation if the only counsel you trust or respect is your own.
It may be an unpopular opinion, but I have some sympathy for Tan. If he has distrust for the football industry, I can completely understand why. It’s an industry where the deeper you get and the more you see, the more you’re repelled by the unchecked greed and immorality. He has kept up his end of the bargain in terms of paying the bill on time and keeping the lights on. He’s also stumped up a lot of money and most of it has been wasted. That is also essentially his own fault though.
If he felt aggrieved by the Andreas Cornelius transfer, rather than become bitter and twisted about it, he could have put measures in place to make sure that sort of deal would never happen again. Instead they soon went on to buy Gary Madine and Robert Glatzel and Cardiff are no less naïve and ignorant a decade later.
Embed from Getty ImagesThe only managers that have thrived during Tan’s reign were Malky Mackay and Neil Warnock, but he appeared to be intimidated by how powerful they became and bitter about how popular they were. He prefers young managers presumably because they tend to be more malleable and subservient. Promoting from within is an admirable concept and plenty of clubs do it very successfully, but when Cardiff do it, its usually the last guy through the door and has the whiff of being little more than cheap and adequate.
Cardiff have pretty much everything in place to truly realise their potential and become a club as big as their stature. Lots of their former peers have managed to do it, with the likes of Nottingham Forest, Fulham, Brentford, Brighton, Bournemouth, Wolves and Crystal Palace all established and thriving in the Premier League. The only thing holding them back is the same man that has the means to make the dream a reality.
If Tan surrounded himself by the right people and valued their expertise, who knows where Cardiff would be now. Instead, he knows best and Cardiff are in a far worse position than when he acquired them. It’s a failing football club and something needs to change, but Tan never will, so the best we can all hope for is that Cardiff can somehow find a way to thrive in spite of their owner and thanks to the funds he provides.